Schwesties In Paradise: Stacked Sports Fans

This is a view of the Munst from the City Gardens. You can see a video of the City Gardens at the bottom of this post.

In front is "Dave" of the Cutters

We were impressed with the short-shorts these guys wore. But we think they stuffed them with socks.

We tried to look up their pants. We even used the zoom lense.

The one girl in the tournament.

Today was the most sports-intensive day that Jane and I probably have ever had. We once again had rhubarb pie and coffee on the balcony, this time with fresh strawberries.

We loaded up the car with our picnic gear and drove over to Dietenbach-Kirchzarten for the tug-of-war tournament. We found a great spot, set up our chaise lounges with the cooler between us and laid back to watch eight teams compete. Unlike last year's German National tournie, this consisted of only 8 teams, which quickly got names such as, "The Lollipop Guild" (green-striped socks,) "Bag of Balls" (I can't go there), "The Rothaus Gang", "The Girl Team" (they had a girl on their team, duh), the "DreamTeam" and "The team with an old guy who has to shave if he wants to go out with us." One of these is the actual name of a team. Guess which one and win a prize. There was also a team we called the "Cutters" because the coach looked like Dave from "Breaking Away." (Our whole life is a movie. Just not an original movie.)

It was fun and we got great movies of the competition. We are going to try to get to Jane's office tomorrow to download pictures and movies.

After the event was over, we walked over by Jane's office and got ice cream cones. Jane had tiramisu, chocolate and hazelnut, I had tiramisu, coffee and rum. We wandered over by the pretty church where there was a beautifully kept graveyard. One thing we saw that we've never seen before was that many of the graves had fancy glass bowls with water in them, and in the water would be a sprig of evergreen tree. We couldn't figure out what that was about. A little later I noticed that the graves which did not have the water and evergreen sprig had a fancy built-in container with cover, and inside of that was a scrub brush. I think the water & sprig were for washing off/dusting the gravestone.

The church is quite old and has a sundial on the side of the building. We went inside and it is beautifully decorated with a baroque altar, and frescoed ceilings.

When the tournament was over, we we had about 4 hours before the soccer finale, so we were going to come back to the apartment for a while, but we detoured to the city garden in Freiburg. we set up our lounge chairs and read our books and napped for a while. The gardens are pretty and were very busy with families and lots of students. There were students kicking around soccer balls, juggling, and even practicing a play (Arthur Miller's The Crucible, I'm 99% sure). We were in sight of the top of the Münster, too, and could hear the bells.

With only 2 hours to go we went back to Jane's crib, painted German flags on our faces, put on our German flag hats and went over to the Rathaus platz where there were tables set up and a beer stand, and stands with wurst and doners. We sat down at the end of a long table and set up our chaises at the end of the table. While we were having a Würst, pretzel and a beer, a guy came over and chatted with us and asked us to save seats for the Burgermeister. Jane ended up painting a German flag on his face! Then some ladies came along and sat at the table. One asked me something and when I said I didn't speak German, she asked where I was from and I told her New Jersey. She launched into a story about her son, who lives in Jersey City, and who she had just visited.

All day we had seen German flags flying from apartments, homes, cars, trucks, businesses. Everywhere you looked there were German flags. Jane pointed out that this does not mean "Hurray for Germany" or contain the sentiment we are familiar with when the American flag goes up everywhere at the 4th of July, or as it did after 9-11. It isn't a patriotic gesture so much as a "Hurray for our team!" kind of thing, like sending your Aunt Bea an Orioles ball cap.

We had watched The Full Monty, and in it Gaz says, (referring to a footie player) "Ooh! Aah! Cantena! Has to wear a girlie bra!" (pronounce "Cantena" as can-ten-AH.) So we thought maybe we could make it work with a few of the Spaniard's names. Turned out it worked with nearly all of them. Ooh! Aah! Cassillas! Has to wear a girlie bra!

The square filled up quickly with people of all ages, lots of people very appropriately dressed in German flags (as skirts and capes), German flag-colored mohawks, painted faces, flags, etc. Great happy atmosphere. As we waited for the game to start we read our books, which impressed more than one person. We are always the obvious nerds at sports events. Remember Mike, Jane and me playing Quiddler (a word game) in an Irish sports bar in Heidelberg last year?

Once the game started we moved down to our lounge chairs. The natives were hugely impressed with our luxurious and comfortable chairs. More than one stopped to mention that we had the right idea. Nerd girls read their books until the game started.

It was fun to watch the game, but Germany lost to Spain, so that sucked. Came back, opened another gift (little soap pigs!) and watch 40 Year Old Virgin (TAFS).